A Clockwork Orange

I read Anthony Burgess' venerable novel yesterday. The rest of this post is about that, and probably useless unless you also happened to spend your evening with the book.

I was struck by the way the language of the nadsat, the teens. It's mostly based on Russian, and by the end of the book, after a word or two each sentence, I was drawn in and reading it easily. A strong effect in a book about brainwashing.

The rest of this entry may spoil the book if you haven't read it, or movie, or whatever.

After living a life of crime, Alex is forced, through strange procedures to his psyche, to obey the law. So his morals haven't changed. His free will has just been taken. A pragmatic result, I suppose. My curiousity lies with his final transformation (in the chapter apparently not originally released in the U.S.) where he seems to bore of crime of his own volition.

Is this when Alex will finally approach a life of moderation, after a lifetime of seemingly pure evil, and then (though forced) pure good? I might be overstating it. Are we to believe that a psychopathic youth can suddenly tire of a life of violence? Not that any of that is stated, or even implied.

I know some people who were fairly awful to be around growing up that have shed ignorance, angst or insecurity to become amazing people. Hope!